Son, what have you done?

The plot of this film is based on a real event. A man named Mark Yusko, portrayed by Michael Shannon (who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in "Revolutionary Road"), brutally killed his mother with a knife in a neighbor's bedroom after experiencing a series of inexplicable and mysterious events. What makes the story even more eerie is that Yusko had previously acted in the play "Oedipus Rex," a well-known Greek tragedy about patricide and marrying one's mother. Herzog stated, "I have always wanted to make a horror film, but I didn't want it to be about blood-soaked axes and chains. Instead, I hope the audience can feel a kind of indescribable fear."